I chose to work alone on this project because I wanted to practice my geoprocessing skills while challenging myself to better manage time and stress. I chose to study Vancouver’s 2020 goal of ensuring that 100% of residents are within a five-minute walk to a greenspace. The goal of this project was to challenge the city’s outdated metric of measuring the walk-target given that external factors that would deter/prevent people from using greenspaces were not included. They merely applied a 400m buffer to greenspaces and said that was it – but this is overly simplified. I aimed to map Vancouver, its variety of green spaces and potential factors that would impact usage of parks. I chose area and distance to roads as external factors limiting the usability of parks. If they were microsized or under one hectare, then people would likely not visit them as often. Also if they were located along a busy arterial road, the park would not serve its purpose of providing relaxation due to noise and pollution.

As a one man show, time was the single greatest pressure for this assignment. Had I spent one more day on the project, I would have produced an entirely different report since I had so many ideas that did not make the final version. I learned a lot about the prevalence of unoccupied dwellings that I would have loved to further explore. For example, the Marine Gateway development that has quickly risen in recent years exhibits some of the highest unoccupied/vacant resident rates in all of Vancouver. Nearly 24% of all private dwellings in that census tract are not lived in by their landowner which I found fascinating, but also unsurprising. Manipulating data to receive these values was the best part about the project for me because I was able to learn new things as a result of my own actions.

COV Greenspace Report